MrBeast

MrBeast started on 2012-02-20 and currently (2022-12-11) has 117M subscribers.

Code

from googleapiclient.discovery import build
 
# Instantiate a googleapiclient.discovery.Resource object for youtube
youtube = build(
  serviceName='youtube', 
  version='v3', 
  developerKey='YOURAPIKEY'
)
 
# Define the request
request = youtube.channels().list(
  part="snippet,statistics",
  id="UCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA"
)
 
# Execute the request and save the response
response = request.execute()
 
# Close the connection
youtube.close()
 
# Fetch the first (and only) item
item = response['items'][0]
 
### Print stuff
print(f"Channel inception: {item['snippet']['publishedAt']}")
# Channel inception: 2012-02-20T00:43:50Z
 
print(f"Current subscribers: {item['statistics']['subscriberCount']}")
# Current subscribers: 117000000

Explanation

Since we want to fetch data about a YouTube channel it makes sense for us to inspect the channels.list resource.

We'll need to tell the YouTube API which channel we'd like to fetch information about. One option is to use the channel's username MrBeast. Another option is to use the channel's id UCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA.

The link we provided on the problem page references MrBeast's channel id, so we'll use that here.

The docs for channels.list indicate that we need to provide one required parameter to the endpoint - part - a comma separated string of resource properties. In our case, we'll use part="snippet,statistics".

Now to write the Python code.. Our Hello World code snippet is a good "jumping off" point.

Steps

1. Import the build() function from the googleapiclient.discovery module.

   from googleapiclient.discovery import build

2. Instantiate a googleapiclient.discovery.Resource object for the youtube service. You'll need to input your API key here.

   youtube = build(
     serviceName='youtube', 
     version='v3', 
     developerKey='YOURAPIKEY'
   )

3. Define the request.

   request = youtube.channels().list(
     part="snippet,statistics",
     id="UCX6OQ3DkcsbYNE6H8uQQuVA" # <- channel id
   )

4. Execute the request.

   response = request.execute()

5. The response is returned as a dictionary with nested data. We just have to traverse it to pick out the data elements we want.

   # Fetch the first (and only) item
   item = response['items'][0]
    
   ### Print stuff
   print(f"Channel inception: {item['snippet']['publishedAt']}")
   # Channel inception: 2012-02-20T00:43:50Z
    
   print(f"Current subscribers: {item['statistics']['subscriberCount']}")
   # Current subscribers: 117000000